Resource Site Spotlight – RaidComp (MMO Champion)

Hi all, Arth here again, and I’m happy to now be a full-fledged member of the Twisted Nether staff. Am I staff? Is that the correct term? Staff might imply payment, though, so it’s more likely that I’m the equivalent of a tree-cutting orc peon. But now I’m Twisted Nether’s own special tree-cutting peon. Zug zug!

MMO Champion is a huge site with a lot of WoW-related resources, but we’re looking at a very specific one today, the Raid Composition tool. Using this can help you understand your raid group’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as possibly make changes to improve it.

The mechanics are simple: drag a class/spec into the raid groups, and the chart on the right will tell you exactly which buffs you do and don’t have. Green checkmarks represent “assured” buffs (Ret pallies with replenishment, for example) while a yellow squiggly line indicates that a buff could be present, but won’t always be. Kings, Might, BoW are all yellow for the same ret pally, since he can only provide one. Another often-overlooked aspect of raid composition is at the bottom right, which tells you how many potential disease, magic, curse, and poison removers are in the group, as well as a few other useful bits of info.

This can also be a valuable tool for potential or current raid leaders, since a good raid leader knows what buffs each class can or should provide, and can use that knowledge to maximize the group’s potential (or to identify lazy players who forget to buff). As a l33t hunter, for example, I don’t speak the language of Faceroll, so I need to research the abilities of the lesser classes (i.e. everyone else).

To see this in action, let’s take a look at my guild’s regular 10M, which looks something like this:

…and is lacking comprehensive caster buffs. As such, the physical dps in our group really shines. This usually isn’t a problem, but we do have casters that sub in every now and then, and their dps suffers because of this. 25M raids should never have such problems, but maximizing a 10M can be hard if certain buffs are not present. And this can help you identify those inadequacies, or just play around with groups to see how buffed they are. I have yet to find a 10M that can cover every single buff, even counting drums/scrolls for things like Kings, Gift, Fort, etc. Extra points if anyone else can.

Installments weekly. Stay tuned. And leave comments! My self-esteem is a fragile, fragile thing. I need online validation every time I lose to a rogue on a damage meter (and about a dozen shots when I lose to a DK).

The resource site spotlight is a “weekly” column about WoW resource sites/utilities written by Arthemystia who also sometimes writes for the Warcraft Hunter’s Union. Be it a website or a utility addon, you’ll never look at WoW the same.

4 comments to Resource Site Spotlight – RaidComp (MMO Champion)

thank you for this, really nice to see it all clear like that, and your last post was pretty special to (reducing my latency by about 200), if this is a sign for things to come, we should all be excited to have you writing over here now